Life at the Limen

Jamey’s excellent post below got me thinking. Saying goodbye is one of my least favorite things to do—perhaps because I don’t think I’m very good at it—and for those around the CSC bracing to make their own goodbyes, I feel your pain.

I was lucky to have a similarly strong faith community where I went to school in Chicago. Much like at the CSC, Sunday night Mass at Madonna della Strada was an event, the pinnacle of the week ahead. For my group of friends, Madonna della Strada—in Italian, “Our Lady of the Road”—became synonymous with the unity and support we felt together alongside our own treks. In the days after the pomp of the graduation ceremonies had died down, one by one these people packed up and left. By the time I said my last goodbyes, I was surprised to discover just how deep my well of tears dipped down.

Jamey suggested trusting your gut and having faith in yourself when making those big decisions which lead you to make those goodbyes. I’d echo that. But above all, you have to trust in the healing and clarifying power of time. Things might not start out easy.

I trusted my gut, turned down a job with Teach for America that would have sent me deep to the soul and blues of the Mississippi Delta, and went back to Chicago, unsure where that first paycheck would come from. Staying around town and finding most people I was closest to spread around the world, I felt a distinct difference when I’d go to Mass at Madonna—if I’d go to Mass at all. The absence of my peers suddenly made the chapel feel significantly less welcoming than it ever had before.

That year, I jumped around to a few jobs—none of which factored in to what seems to be my career path—but as I struggled, that year I learned more about me, and how to find instances of happiness amidst serious personal doubts, than I probably ever have in any other single year. That year, I aligned myself much better with a sense of who I was. Separated from this community that had helped me for so long, I was forced to take the training wheels off and go into my own solitude to realize that what I most wanted next was what was on my heart all along. College had continued seeing me formed and fashioned, and it just took me a little separation to realize that.

Jamey’s right. These first jobs after college will profoundly influence your future. Just not in the way you might expect. Post-graduation life is difficult; there’s no denying that. But go ahead and take a few chances. Take a job that will challenge you, engage you, and force you to step outside of yourself—even if it’s something you’ll only do for six months or a year, and never again. The lessons waiting for you there are vast and just as important as what you learned in the lecture halls and laboratories. If you don't feel challenged or engaged, odds are you're barking up the wrong tree.

One caveat: truly do make the most of the time you have remaining. Don’t wake up in six months and carry regrets about things you wanted to do. Let the friends and people you love know how much they mean to you. This is a special time in your life that you’ll look back on with soft eyes and a warm heart. And even if it hurts, trust your gut and live each moment for what it is—a beautiful, sometimes painful and awkward, but always instructive and life-giving, expression of the gift of life that God has given us.